464: Invisible Made Visible
This American Life
This American Life
4.6 • 88.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The radio version of an episode we did live on stage and beamed to movie theaters. David Sedaris, Tig Notaro, Ryan Knighton, and the late David Rakoff in his final performance on the show. The other half of this two-hour show was visual, including dancers, animation, and more. You can watch it on YouTube.
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- Ira interviews Ryan Knighton, a blind guy who had a very peculiar experience with a hotel room telephone. (7 minutes)
- Act One: Ryan Knighton tells a story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness. (7 minutes)
- Act Two: Famous people are supposed to be somewhere else, invisible to us. Comedian Tig Notaro tells this story about repeatedly running into Taylor Dayne, who was a pop star in the late 80s and early 90s. At the end of the story, we have a little surprise for Tig. (16 minutes)
- Act Three: David Rakoff tells this story, about the invisible processes that can happen inside our bodies and the visible effects they eventually have. (15 minutes)
- Act Four: Ira Glass's sister once met David Sedaris, and commented that he was much nicer than she thought he would be, given his writing. David replied, "I'm not nice, just two-faced." In this story, David shares the thoughts running through his head as he attempts to buy a cup of coffee. (8 minutes)
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Transcript
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| 0:28.5 | Ryan started going blind when he was 18, so it's been a long time now that he can't see. |
| 0:34.7 | And one night he flies to Chicago for this work thing and gets to his hotel room |
| 0:39.7 | and he wants to call his wife back home in Canada to let her know that he's arrived safely. So all he |
| 0:45.2 | needs to do is find the phone. And so I walk into the room and I find the bed. And then to the left |
| 0:53.1 | of the bed I feel along and I find this nightstand |
| 0:57.3 | which is where I expect the phone to be. |
| 1:00.7 | And so I feel up the nightstand and there's no phone. |
| 1:04.4 | Fine. |
| 1:04.9 | So I reach across the bed to the other side and find the other nightstand and I feel that that one up, and there's no phone. |
| 1:12.3 | That's unusual, right? |
| 1:13.4 | It's a bit odd, right? |
| 1:18.3 | So Ryan can shuffle cautiously around to his knees, graze into things, |
| 1:22.8 | and that's how he finds a sofa, which orientes him. |
| 1:26.9 | And so I turn to where I think there might be a table, |
| 1:29.3 | and poof, there's a coffee table. |
| 1:31.5 | So I grope this coffee table for a while, |
... |
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